Departments

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Historians/History

  • 4/18/2021

    Who Won the American Revolution?

    by Guy Chet

    Almost since the smoke cleared after the Battle of Lexington, Americans have debated the relative merits of the militias and the Continental Army in fighting the British. The relative esteem of each group has followed changes in the politics of the nation. 

  • 4/18/2021

    What Do John Dewey's Century-Old Thoughts on Anti-Asian Bigotry Teach Us?

    by Charles F. Howlett

    A century ago, the American philosopher and educator took a sabattical to China and concluded that, if encouraged to learn about other cultures, White Americans could be brought to acceptance of Asian Americans and other immigrants as equal participants in democracy. COVID-inspired bigotry shows this dream remains unrealized.

  • 4/18/2021

    The Real Patriots Invaded the Nation’s Capital Fifty Years Ago

    by Elise Lemire

    On this Patriots’ Day, fifty years after a battalion of Vietnam veterans brought their anguish and their outrage to the Capitol Building, we are reminded of the idealistic threads connecting the militiamen of Lexington and Concord and the Vietnam Veterans Against the War. 

  • 4/18/2021

    Don't Erase Women's Leadership in the Berkeley Free Speech Movement

    by Robert Cohen

    Historians have yet to fully examine the role of women in leadership and at the grass roots of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement. Even some of the best and most insightful accounts of the FSM treat it as a movement of men and ignore the key roles of Jackie Goldberg, Bettina Aptheker and others. 

  • 4/11/2021

    Gordon Liddy and the Greek Connection to Watergate

    by James H. Barron

    The recent death of Watergate conspirator G. Gordon Liddy has sparked renewed interest in the intricacies of the affair. The author argues that the material the "Plumbers" sought in the burglary related to a Greek journalist's efforts to expose illegal contributions by the Greek dictatorship to the 1968 election campaign of Richard Nixon. 

  • 4/11/2021

    60 Years Later: The Enduring Legacy of the Bay of Pigs Fiasco

    by Stephen F. Knott

    The failed invasion of Cuba by CIA-trained operatives at the Bay of Pigs set the Kennedy administration on a path of increasingly abusive covert operations against the communist regime, with consequences for US-Cuban relations and American foreign policy that still reverberate. 

  • 4/4/2021

    Hidden Stories of Jewish Resistance in Poland

    by Judy Batalion

    I was fascinated by the widespread resistance efforts of Polish Jews, but equally by their absence from current understandings of the war. Of all the legions of Holocaust tales, what had happened to this one?

  • 3/28/2021

    America Does Have an "Original Sin": A Response to James Goodman

    by Joshua Ward Jeffery

    "Original Sin" is a fit metaphor for longstanding inequities in American society, but it's important to understand that the original sin is settler colonialism and the seizure of indigenous land, which American civic religion has been all too willing to accommodate. 

  • 3/28/2021

    "What the Black Man Wants": Frederick Douglass's Answers Still Resonate

    by Ashley Cruseturner

    WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH THE NEGRO? "Do nothing with us," Douglass suggested. The author argues that an inclusive conservatism can and must support individual liberty while recognizing that American society falls short of Douglass's expectation of full and free participation in the economic and political life of the nation.

  • 3/14/2021

    Remembering the Father of Vaccination

    by Richard Gunderman

    "Whether or not Jenner truly saved more lives than any other person, there is no doubt that his pioneering work on immunization laid the groundwork for today’s most effective tool against COVID-19, the vaccine."

  • 3/14/2021

    The Long History of Women Warriors

    by Fred Zilian

    Archaeological discoveries dating to the 5th century BCE show that the Amazons of Greek lore were based on the nomadic Scythians of Eurasia, part of a body of evidence that confounds the idea that rigidly demarcated gender roles are universal or inevitable.

  • 3/14/2021

    FDR and the Need for Truth

    by Stephen Dando-Collins

    Franklin Roosevelt took a novel approach to handling bad domestic and military news in 1943, amid stiff political opposition: showing the public the hard truth about the Pacific War. 

  • 3/14/2021

    The Birth, and Life, of a Word

    by Ralph Keyes

    One of the most widely-used terms in discussions of American racism has its roots in a campaign by two pro-slavery writers to troll abolitionists through a fake tract promoting "miscegenation."

  • 3/14/2021

    The Big Ideas History Syllabus

    by Andrew Joseph Pegoda

    Good teachers consider their method, communication, and sources carefully. What about our subject, as teachers of history? How do we communicate what history is as a "big idea"? 

  • 3/7/2021

    Was Madison Mistaken?

    by Carl Pletsch

    The divisive Trump years have called the wisdom of the Framers into question, but the author contends that James Madison in particular anticipated how a republic would be challenged by partisanship and designed one that could withstand that challenge (he just never claimed it would be easy).